Economist debates: Biotechnology debate: The result

December 17, 2011 Editor 0

“This house believes that biotechnology and sustainable agriculture are complementary, not contradictory”THE voting has shifted dramatically during this debate, starting out heavily in favour of the motion, swinging strongly in the other direction (seemingly in response to an organised campaign by anti-GM activists), and then swinging back towards the middle. But in the end the opponents of biotechnology—or, more precisely, the opponents of genetic modification in its current form—carried the day with 62% of the votes, against 38% for supporters of the motion.This is a subject that arouses strong passions on both sides, as can clearly be seen in the comments, but I hope you still found the debate informative. I certainly did, in particular because of the comments from farmers themselves, on both sides of the argument. Neither a rapprochement between the two sides, nor a resolution of the arguments one way or another, seems likely any time soon. Thank you all for participating.Moderator’s note: The result is being announced in this rather unusual way (in the form of this blog post, rather than on the debate microsite) for an unusual reason; a reason that also explains why the voting tallies have appeared to leap around rather erratically during the debate. Several commenters pointed this out and suggested that this was evidence of foul play. In fact the explanation is …
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Categories: The Economist

Tags: biotechnology, debate, The Economist